Monumental sculpture

In aspect, planning, architecture and art, the cities of Moesia and Thrace were no different from those of the eastern Hellenistic provinces. Monumental sculpture, which was, in general, a form of art alien to the Thracians, became widespread towards the end of the 2nd century A. D. Excavations in towns and settlements constantly reveal pedestals of statues, and the statues themselves; they represent various deities both of the Graeco-Roman pantheon and of the cults of other countries and peoples, which invaded and rapidly spread throughout the two provinces, displacing the local Thracian cults to a large extent. One of the largest statues ever found, probably of Demeter,. 2.83 m. in height without its pedestal, came to light at Oescus years ago. The head and arms are lacking; they had been separately made and’ attached to the trunk.

The sculptor had treated the draperies of its clothing with great skill and lightness, not only clearly stressing the difference in the material of chiton and cloak, but also successfully modelling the forms of the body beneath its garments. The works of. the old Greek masters of the classical period of Greek art were particularly highly prized by the cities of Thrace and Moesia. A very fine copy of Praxiteles’s Eros came from Nicopolis ad Istrum. From the Roman camp at the village of Riben, Pleven district, comes a somewhat fragmentary copy of the statue of the Resting Satyr, also by Praxiteles guided istanbul tours. In the sphere of sculpture here too, as in the other Roman provinces, portrait sculpture developed extensively. It followed, on general lines, the development of this art in Rome and Italy. But here too certain nuances of provincial art are noticeable.

Roman busts

The museums of Bulgaria abound in Roman busts — portrait busts of the Emperors, which ornamented the public places and squares, portrait busts of eminent citizens, to whom statues were erected at the decision of the municipalities in gratitude for the services they had rendered their native cities. And lastly portrait sculpture was extensively used on the tombs. Among the numerous works of this nature the head of Gordian III (238—244), row in the Sofia Museum, deserves mention; it belonged to a bronze statue of this emperor, which stood in Niccpolis ad Istrum.

However, together with the great master sculptors, who worked in the workshops of the cities in the style of the official Roman-Hellenistic art, and whose vast output barely managed to satisfy the great needs of construction in the Roman cities, the workshops of the local masters were at work no less intensively in the villages around the local shrines; they had to satisfy the religious needs of the masses in connexion with the rites of the local cults and the cult of the dead.

The custom of consecrating stone tablets or statuettes with the images of the gods worshipped in the small village shrines, or of putting up monuments on tombs with symbolical imagery connected with the activity of the deceased, had penetrated the widest socialstrata under the influence of the Roman and Hellenistic religion. In the conventional images of the gods of the Roman and Greek pantheon, the Thracian population continued to worship its local gods with their specific Thracian names, among which the cult of the «Thracian Horseman» was particularly widespread. Thousands of votive tablets are preserved in the Bulgarian museums upon which the whole scale of the Thracians’ religion in this period is depicted.

SOFIA KARLOVOKAZANLUK MOUNT STOLETOV

SOFIA-KARLOVOKAZANLUK-MOUNT STOLETOV-SLIVEN BOURGAS SLUNCHEV BRYAG (398 km)

The route takes you through the sub-Balkan valley and the famous Valley of Roses to the sea. On your way you will see the attractive sub-Balkan towns and villages of Klissoura, Rozino, Karlovo, Sopot, Kalofer and Kazanluk. From here you can follow the road to the top of Mount Stoletov (in the north there is a side road leading to Kotel and Zheravna) and then on to Bourgas and Slunchev Bryag.

SOFIA PLOVDIV-ASSENOVGRAD PAMPOROVO-SMOLYAN (250 km)

The road passes through Ihtiman, Pazardjik, the second largest Bulgarian city of Plovdiv and then turns south to pass Assen’s fortress and the Bachkovo Monastery (29 km from Plovdiv), up to the modern mountain resort of Pamporovo. 15 km to the south is Smolyan, tucked away in a mountainous area of great scenic beauty. From Plovdiv you may continue via Stara Zagora to Bourgas.

VELIKO TURNOVO-OMOURTAG- TURGOVISHTE-SHOUMEN-PRESLAV- PUSKA- MADARA NOVI PAZAR- VARNA (240 km)

After enjoying the picturesque views in Veliko Turnovo, you set out for the major administrative and economic centre of Shoumen. From here you must without fail go to’Preslav and Pliska, as well as to Madara — a complex of old fortresses, remains of religious buildings and among them a unique rock relief, dating probably from the 9th century and representing a horseman with a lance, piercing a lioness.

SOFIA LOVECH VELIKO TURNOVO- GABROVO (260km)

From Sofia you cross the Balkan Range by the Botevgrad Pass, set out for Lovech, go across the famous covered bridge, the work of the Bulgarian master-builder Nikola Fichev tour bulgaria. Gabrovo was known in the past as Bulgaria’s Manchester. The historical reservations and museum villages Bozhentsi and Etur lie nearby. From here one can set out for Mount Stoletov and the Liberty Monument. Further on you come to Veliko Tur- novo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom.

VARNA-DROUZHBA ZLATNI PYASSATSI- ALBENA-ROUSSALKA (80 km)

This route, in addition to the wonderful view of the sea, will enable you to see a number of historical and cultural monuments in Varna, Balchik and Kavarna, plus several modern seaside resorts.

VARNA SLUNCHEV BRYAG- BOURGAS- SOZOPOL PRIMORSKO (190 km)

From Varna, head for Slunchev Bryag and you will pass through several small resorts, such as Byala, the estuary of the Kamchiya River, Obzor, Banya, and further on, after Slunchev Bryag, you will arrive at the old little town of Nessebur. Then on to Pomorie, Bourgas and Sozopol (ancient ApoIIonia), and after that – Primorsko, which has become popular through the International Youth Resort Complex.

Ottoman rule lasted nearly five centuries

Ottoman rule lasted nearly five centuries, impeding the development of the country. The Bulgarian people several times rose up against the oppressors, but their struggles were all drowned in blood. The period of Bulgaria’s National Revival, which set in during the 18th century, coincided with the stepping up of the national-liberation struggle. The monk Paissi of Hilendar is considered the forefather of the Bulgarian National Revival; in 1762 he wrote a Slav-Bulgarian History, which played an exceedingly important role in awakening the Bulgarian people’s national feeling. In the struggle for national liberation the figures of Georgi Rakovski, Lyuben Karavelov, Vassil Levski, Hristo Botev, etc., stand out. After the brutal crushing of the April 1876 Uprising, Russia declared war on Turkey and this war brought the freedom of the Bulgarian people. With the San Stefano treaty between Russia and Turkey on March 3, 1878, Bulgaria became a free state.

The Third Bulgarian State comprises a brief historical period of a little more than five decades, but very important developments took place in the country in that time. At the end of the 19th century Bulgaria embarked on the capitalist road of development. A socialist movement made its appearance in the country, and the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Agrarian Party were founded. In the period between 1912 and 1918 Bulgaria took part in the Balkan Wars and in the First World War. After the legislative elections in 1920, an agrarian government came to power headed by Alexander Stamboliiski. But his rule did not last long. On June 9, 1923 a military fascist coup was perpetrated. In September 1923, under the leadership of the Communist Party, the first anti-fascist uprising in the world broke out in the country.

It was defeated, however, and more than 30,000 loyal sons and daughters of the people were killed by the fascists. The period between 1924 and 1941 was marked by acute political struggles. The king, who had set up a personal dictatorship, in 1941 gave his consent for the nazi forces to invade the country. The armed struggle which was waged from 1941 to 1944 by the Bulgarian people under the leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party was crowned with the people’s victory of September 9 daily ephesus tours, 1944, thanks to the decisive assistance of the Soviet Army, which was victoriously marching westward. After a referendum, held in 1946, Bulgaria was proclaimed a People’s Republic.

The Bulgarian Communist Party

A new Constitution was adopted by a referendum on May 16, 1971, replacing that of 1947. According to the new constitution, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria is a socialist state of the working people of town and country. The Bulgarian Communist Party is the leading force in the country. In the People’s Republic of Bulgaria power stems from the people and belongs to the people. Every Bulgarian citizen over the age of 18 has the right to elect and to be elected. The supreme representative body of state power is the National Assembly which is constituted for a period of four years. It issues laws, adopts the state budget, approves the economic plans, approves and releases the government, the Supreme Court and the Chief Public Prosecutor. The State Council is a supreme permanent operative organ of the National Assembly, uniting the legislative and executive power in the state, controlling the fulfilment of the decisions of the National Assembly, the activity of the Council of Ministers and other state bodies. It consists of a president, vice-presidents and members – national representatives. The local people’s councils are also elective organs of state power. In the country there are 28 districts, in which power is vested in the district people’s councils. The basic administrative unit in Bulgaria is the municipality, headed by a municipal (town or village) people’s council. The highest executive organ of state government is the Council of Ministers.

In Bulgaria there are two political parties: the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) – with a membership of 700,000 – the universally acknowledged leading force in the country, and the Bulgarian Agrarian Party (BAP) – with a membership of 120,000.The largest mass political organization is the Fatherland Front. Besides it, there are the trade unions, the Dimitrov Young Communist League, as well as women’s, sports and other organizations,

Economically Bulgaria is an industrial and agricultural country with a highly developed industry and a streamlined system of cooperative farming. Hundreds of plants have been built in the various towns. Particularly great attention is devoted to engineering and to the chemical industry products of the ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, to power production, to the light and food and beverage industries.

The Health of Nations

We may take in turn a few of the ways in which the lives of these 30,000 victims a year may be saved; and, with their lives, the infinite sorrow, suffering, and loss which these 30,000 deaths involve. There is a book with a most happy title, the instructive record of a most useful life — I mean The Health of Nations, by the well-known reformer Sir B. Richardson. In that book Dr. Richardson has collected the writings, described the schemes, and explained the work of his friend, Edwin Chadwick, the Nestor of sanitary reform, the Jeremy Bentham of the Victorian epoch, the pioneer and venerable chief of all health reformers.

Edwin Chadwick, himself the philosophical executor and residuary legatee of old Jeremy Bentham as a social and practical reformer, in extreme and hale old age — he was born in the last century, in 1800 — was still in 1887 hearty and energetic in the cause to which he has devoted sixty years of his life—the great cause of the Health of Nations. The Health of Nations is quite as important as the Wealth of Nations. If the Health of Nations does not need the philosophical genius of Adam Smith, or the analytic genius of Jeremy Bentham, it needs a spirit of social devotedness quite as serious, and a practical energy in the apostle quite as great. As Burke told us that John Howard had devoted himself to a ‘ circumnavigation of charity private guide turkey,’ so Edwin Chadwick sixty years ago began a ‘ circumnavigation of sanitation,’ and after all his voyages he has at length finally put into port.

Of all problems

Of all problems, the most important is—water. We are drinking water that at times is contaminated with sewage, as well as with foul surface drainage, and that to a degree which under possible conditions may become deadly. I saw not long ago one of the large affluents of the Upper Thames poisoned by mineral refuse to a degree which suddenly killed the whole of the fish. This garbage — mineral poison, refuse, and decaying fish — we in London had to drink. It is true that such are the forces of nature that even mineral poison and stinking fish does not kill us always — in moderate doses. Were it not for the vis medicatrix naturce in the matter of water, air, and soil, we should all be dead men some morning, the whole four millions of us together.

This want of abundant pure water is one of the most crying wants of our age. There are two or three modes in which London can be supplied with wholesome water. Whether it is to come out of the chalk, whether it is to be collected out of several of the southern rivers at their head sources, whether it is to come by a vast aqueduct from Bala Lake, the West Midland hills, or from Ullswater, we need not discuss. But it has to come — pure, abundant, constant. Ultimately, I believe, there will be a main aqueduct down England from the lakes of Westmoreland, sending off branch mains to the greater Northern and Midland towns, and pouring into London a river like the Eamont at Penrith —an inexhaustible source of pure water, just as the Claudian or the Julian Aqueducts poured their rivers into Rome — Rome, the immortal type of all that a great city ought to have in the way of water supply.

Let us away with all the nastiness and stupidities of cis-terns, with their dirt, poison, discomfort, and cost; away with the ball-cock, and the bursting pipes, and all the abominations of bungling plumbers. A continuous water supply is a necessity of civilisation. But free water is as much a necessity of civilisation as pure water, or continuous water.

Russia in the Balkan peninsula

We are accustomed, again, to treat the position of Russia in the Balkan peninsula as one of influence more or less continuous, but as not practically affecting the Eastern Mediterranean and its lands. Russia has not yet effected any real footing on the peninsula. She finds it occupied by Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Austria, Turkey, and Greece. Over these Russia exercises an intermittent influence, but never controls them all at the same time; and she often finds one or more of them in direct opposition.

Accordingly, we do not regard the Muscovite as dominant in the Balkan peninsula, much less in the Archipelago. But place Russia on the wonderful throne of the Bosphorus, with the inevitable addition of Adrianople and the Maritza Valley, at the very least, in Southern Rou- melia, and the whole situation is transformed. The possession of Constantinople by Russia, with her enormous resources and grand navy, means the control by Russia of the Bosphorus, the Marmora, the Hellespont, and, at least, of South-Eastern Roumelia.

Could it stop there? Would the absolute chief of an army of two millions and a half, with the third great navy of the world, fall into slumber in his new and resplendent capital, rebuild the Seraglio, or amuse himself in Yildiz Kiosk? He would immediately create the second great navy of the world, and for all Mediterranean purposes his navy would be at least the rival of the first guided turkey tours. How long would Roumania and Bulgaria remain their own masters when they found themselves between his countless legions on the Pruth and his great fleet in the Golden Horn? What would Servia say to the change — or Austria?

Musulmans in Roumelia

Would the Albanians be content? And what would become of the Musulmans in Roumelia? The prospect opens at least five or six international imbroglios with knotty problems of race, religion, patriotism, and political sympathies and antipathies. Any one of these is enough to cause a European crisis — and even an embittered war.

In the long run, though it might be a struggle prolonged for a century, Russia would in some form or other command or control the entire peninsula from the Danube to Cape Matapan; not, perhaps, counting it all strictly in Russian territory, but being dominant therein as is Victoria in the Indian peninsula. The geographical conditions of Constantinople are so extraordinary; they offer such boundless opportunities to a first-class military and naval power; they lie so curiously ready to promote the ambition of Russia, that the advent of the Czar to the capital of the Sultan would produce a change in Europe greater than any witnessed in the nineteenth century.

The absolute monarch of a hundred millions, with an army of two and a half millions, possessing sole command of the Black Sea, Bosphorus, Marmora, and Hellespont, together with the incomparable naval basis which is afforded by this chain of four inland seas, would unquestionably be supreme master of the whole of Eastern Europe, which would then extend under one sceptre from the Arctic Ocean to the Greek Archipelago.

Russia in the Balkan peninsula

We are accustomed, again, to treat the position of Russia in the Balkan peninsula as one of influence more or less continuous, but as not practically affecting the Eastern Mediterranean and its lands. Russia has not yet effected any real footing on the peninsula. She finds it occupied by Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Austria, Turkey, and Greece. Over these Russia exercises an intermittent influence, but never controls them all at the same time; and she often finds one or more of them in direct opposition.

Accordingly, we do not regard the Muscovite as dominant in the Balkan peninsula, much less in the Archipelago. But place Russia on the wonderful throne of the Bosphorus, with the inevitable addition of Adrianople and the Maritza Valley, at the very least, in Southern Rou- melia, and the whole situation is transformed. The possession of Constantinople by Russia, with her enormous resources and grand navy, means the control by Russia of the Bosphorus, the Marmora, the Hellespont, and, at least, of South-Eastern Roumelia.

Could it stop there? Would the absolute chief of an army of two millions and a half, with the third great navy of the world, fall into slumber in his new and resplendent capital, rebuild the Seraglio, or amuse himself in Yildiz Kiosk? He would immediately create the second great navy of the world, and for all Mediterranean purposes his navy would be at least the rival of the first guided turkey tours. How long would Roumania and Bulgaria remain their own masters when they found themselves between his countless legions on the Pruth and his great fleet in the Golden Horn? What would Servia say to the change — or Austria?

Musulmans in Roumelia

Would the Albanians be content? And what would become of the Musulmans in Roumelia? The prospect opens at least five or six international imbroglios with knotty problems of race, religion, patriotism, and political sympathies and antipathies. Any one of these is enough to cause a European crisis — and even an embittered war.

In the long run, though it might be a struggle prolonged for a century, Russia would in some form or other command or control the entire peninsula from the Danube to Cape Matapan; not, perhaps, counting it all strictly in Russian territory, but being dominant therein as is Victoria in the Indian peninsula. The geographical conditions of Constantinople are so extraordinary; they offer such boundless opportunities to a first-class military and naval power; they lie so curiously ready to promote the ambition of Russia, that the advent of the Czar to the capital of the Sultan would produce a change in Europe greater than any witnessed in the nineteenth century.

The absolute monarch of a hundred millions, with an army of two and a half millions, possessing sole command of the Black Sea, Bosphorus, Marmora, and Hellespont, together with the incomparable naval basis which is afforded by this chain of four inland seas, would unquestionably be supreme master of the whole of Eastern Europe, which would then extend under one sceptre from the Arctic Ocean to the Greek Archipelago.

Small scale of ancient Athens

It requires an effort to bring home to the mind the small scale of ancient Athens. It does not seem within the old walls to have exceeded a square mile, about the area of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and one-hundredth part of London. Out of this space, the Acropolis, wholly devoted to public buildings, the Areopagus, the Pnyx, and the Agora must have occupied at least one-tenth. But a few hundred acres, or the area of one of the large London parks, remained for private houses. These were mainly of wood and plaster, principally used at night. Of mansions for private citizens, of a permanent kind there is no vestige nor any reference in classical times. The normal population could hardly have exceeded 25,000 full citizens; and we cannot believe that the city and the ports together could ever have contained 200,000 souls, even counting slaves, strangers, women, and children.

Their whole life was public: their main life was spent in the open air. Their homes were shelters at night, with harems for the women and children. The climate of Athens is such that nothing to be called winter cold occurs between the end of February and the middle of December, and rain seldom falls between May and the end of October. We must imagine the Athenians of the great age as a very small class of free and privileged men, personally known to each other, living on terms of absolute equality walking tours ephesus, passing their lives in public, mainly in the porticoes, colonnades, temples, and market-places, having little serious work except in time of war, with strong civic patriotism, and in-tense local superstitions, lounging about with a noble sense of superiority like the officers of the guard in some military capital.

With all hard work committed

They were educated in certain things and in certain modes beyond the wildest dream of modern culture, with all hard work committed to slaves, all cares of the household to women: passionately keen about grace, beauty, wit, and intellect. Their culture consisted of poetry, mythology, music, gymnastics, arithmetic, the art of conversation, infinite subtlety in the use of their own language, and abnormal sensitiveness to rhythm, grace of expression, wit, and all forms of beauty. So they lived daintily, as their poet said, in a balmy flood of light, sur-rounded by temples, statues, porticoes, shrines, and paintings, and at every corner of their city dominated by the radiant majesty of the Acropolis and its divine Guardian.

It is not easy to conceive the effect of a building of Pentelic marble in that atmosphere until one has seen it on the spot. But when we behold a new marble colonnade in that pellucid air, sparkling like the Silberhorn peak of the Jungfrau in the early morning light, we instantly comprehend the peculiarities of that style. A Doric pediment in London no more enables us to understand a temple at Athens than the bronze Achilles of Hyde Park recalls to us the Athene Promachos of Pheidias. The Vestry of the Church of St. Pancras in Euston Square is not more like the Erechtheum than the pediment of St. Martin’s in the Fields is like the Parthenon. The British Museum, the only tolerable Greek building in London, looks somewhat as a Greek temple might look during the eruption of a volcano. Two thousand three hundred and twenty-five years have tinged the Parthenon and the Propylaea a deep orange or russet.

The Modern City

With all this, there was about the great cities of the Middle Ages a noble spirit of civic life and energy, an ever-present love of Art, a zeal for good work as good work, and a deep under-lying sense of social duty and personal faithfulness. A real and sacred bond held the master and his apprentices together, the master workman to his men, the craftsman to his gild-brethren, the gild- men in the mass as a great aggregate corporation. Each burgher’s house was his factory and workshop, each house, each parish, each gild, each town had its own patron saint, its own special church, its own feudal patron, its corporate life, its own privileges, traditions, and emblems.

Thus grew up for the whole range of the artificer’s life, for the civic life, for the commercial life, a profound sense of consecrated rule which amounted to a kind of religion of Industry, a sort of patriotism of Industry, an Art of Industry, the like of which has never existed before or since. It was in ideal and in aim (though alas! not often in fact) the highest form of secular life that human society has yet reached. It rested ultimately, though somewhat vaguely, on religious Duty. And it produced a sense of mutual obligation between master and man, employer and employed, old and young, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. To restore the place of this sense of social obligation in Industry, the world has been seeking and experimenting now for these four centuries past adventure balkan tours.

The Modern City

It is needless to describe the modern city: we all know what it is, some of us too well. The first great fact about the Modern City is that it is in a far lower stage of organic life. It is almost entirely bereft of any religious, patriotic, or artistic character as a whole. There is in modern cities a great deal of active religious life, much public spirit, in certain parts a love of beauty, taste, and cultivation of a special kind. But it is not embodied in the city; it is not associated with the city; it does not radiate from the city. The Modern City is ever changing, loose in its organization, casual in its form. It grows up, or extends suddenly, no man knows how, in a single generation — in America in a single decade. Its denizens come and go, pass on, changing every few years and even months. Few families have lived in the same city for three successive generations. An Athenian, Syracusan, Roman family had dwelt in their city for twenty generations.

A typical industrial city of modern times has no founder, no traditional heroes, no patrons or saints, no emblem, no .history, no definite circuit. In a century, it changes its population over and over again, and takes on two or three different forms. In ten or twenty years it evolves a vast new suburb, a mere wen of bricks or stone, with no god or demi-god for its founder, but a speculative builder, a syndi-cate or a railway. The speculative builder or the company want a quick return for their money. The new suburb is occupied by people who are so busy, and in such a hurry to get to work, that in taking a house, their sole inquiry is — how near is it to the station, or where the tram-car puts you down.

The national Crown

But in France, whilst the national authority had passed from the lord of the fief to the national Crown, the legal privileges, the personal and local exemptions, were preserved intact. The peasant remained for many practical purposes a serf, even whilst he owned his own farm. A series of dues were payable to the lord; personal services were still exacted; special rights were in full vigour.

The peasant, proprietor as he was, still delved the lord’s land, carted his produce, paid his local dues, made his roads. All this had to be done without payment, as coivte, or forced labour tax. The peasants were in the position of a people during a most oppressive state of siege, when a foreign army is in occupation of a country. The foreign army was the privileged order. Everything and every one outside of this order was the subject of oppressive requisition. The lord paid no taxes on his lands, was not answerable to the ordinary tribunals, was practically exempt from the criminal law, had the sole right of sporting, could alone serve as an officer in the army, could alone aspire to any office under the Crown. In one province alone during a single reign two thousand tolls were abolished. There were tolls on bridges, on ferries, on paths, on fairs, on markets.

There were rights of warren, rights of pigeon-houses, of chase, and fishing. There were dues payable on the birth of an heir, on marriage, on the acquisition of a new property by the lord, dues payable for fire, for the passage of a flock, for pasture, for wood customized tours istanbul. The peasant was compelled to bring his corn to be ground in the lord’s mill, to crush his grapes at the lord’s wine-press, to suffer his crops to be devoured by the lord’s game and pigeons.

Transfer of the property

A heavy fine was payable on sale or transfer of the property; on every side were due quit-rents, rent- charges, fines, dues in money and in kind, which could not be commuted and could not be redeemed. After the lord’s dues came those of the Church, the tithes payable in kind, and other dues and exactions of the spiritual army. And even this was but the domestic side of the picture. After the lord and the Church came the king’s officers, the king’s taxes, the king’s requisitions, with all the multiform oppression, corruption, and peculation of the farmers of the revenue and the intendants of the province.

Under this manifold congeries of more than Turkish misrule, it was not surprising that agriculture was ruined and the ‘country became desolate. A fearful picture of that desolation has been drawn for us by our economist, Arthur Young, in 1787, 1788, 1789.

Every one is familiar with the dreadful passages wherein he speaks of haggard men and women wearily tilling the soil, sustained on black bread, roots, and water, and living in smoky hovels without windows; of the wilderness presented by the estates of absentee grandees; of the infinite tolls, dues, taxes, and impositions, of the cruel punishments on smugglers, on the dealers in contraband salt, on poachers, and deserters. It was not surprising that famines were incessant, that the revenue decreased, and that France was sinking into the decrepitude of an Eastern absolutism. ‘For years,’ said d’Argenson, ‘ I have watched the ruin increasing. Men around me are now starving like flies, or eating grass.’ There were thirty thousand beggars, and whole provinces living on occasional alms, two thousand persons in prison for smuggling salt alone. Men were imprisoned by lettres de cachet by the thousand.

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘We do not ask you to enjoy,’ said the Bede, in his dry way, ‘ we only ask you to know — or, to be quite accurate, to satisfy the examiners. The brilliant apologist of Henry vm. seems to give you delightful lectures; but I can assure you that the Schools know no other standard but that of accurate research, in the manner so solidly established by the late Regius Professor whom we have lost.’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

‘My young friend,’ said the Reverend Ethelbald, ‘you will find that dates, authorities, texts, facts, and plenty of diphthongs pay much better. You are in danger of mortal heresy, if you think that anything will show you a royal ‘

road to these. If there is one thing which, more than another private sofia tours, is the mark of Oxford to-day, it is belief in contemporary documents, exact testing of authorities, scrupulous verification of citations, minute attention to chronology, geography, palaeography, and inscriptions. When all these are right, you cannot go wrong. For all this we owe our gratitude to the great historian we have lost.’

‘ Oh, yes,’ said Phil airily, for he was quite aware that he was thought to be shaky in his pre-Ecgberht chronicles; ‘ I am not saying a word against accuracy. But all facts are not equally important, nor are all old documents of the same use. I have been grinding all this term at the History of the Norman Conquest, verifying all the citations as I go along, and making maps of every place that is named. I have only got to the third volume, you know, and I don’t know now what it all comes to. Freeman’s West-Saxon scuffles on the downs seem to me duller than Thucydidesfifty hoplites and three hundred sling-men, and I have not yet come to anything to compare with the Syracusan expedition.’

‘ This is a bad beginning for a history man,’ said Baeda. Is this how they talked at Eton of the greatest period of the greatest race in the annals of the world? All history centres round the early records of the English in the three or four centuries before the first coming of the Jutes, and the three or four after it. Let me advise you to take as your period, say, the battle of Ellandun, and get up all about it, and how “ its stream was choked with slain,” and what led up to it and what came after it. Do you know anything more interesting, as you call it, than that? ’

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘Yes,’ said Phil readily, with all the recklessness of a smart freshman; ‘why, Ellandun was merely the slogging of savages, of whom we know nothing but a few names. What I call fine history is Macaulay’s famous account of the state of England under the Stuarts, or Froude’s splendid picture of the trial and execution of Mary of Scots. That is a piece of writing that no one can ever forget.’

‘Ah, just so !’ said the Venerable, in that awful mono-syllabic way which he had caught from the Master; ‘ splen-did picture ! — piece of writing ! — fine history ! — here we generally take “fine history” to be — ah! false history.’

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

‘We usually find it so,’ replied his tutor, ‘and it is ten times worse than false quantities in a copy of longs and shorts. There is no worse offence outside the statute book (and many offences in it are less immoral) than the crime of making up a picture of actual events for the sake of literary effect, with no real care for exact truthfulness of detail. A historical romance, as they call novels of past ages, is often a source of troublesome errors; but, at any rate, in a novel we know what to expect. It is a pity that Scott should talk nonsense about Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, and that Bulwer introduced Caxton into the Last of the Barons. But no one expects to find truth in such books, and every one reads them at his own peril. In a history of England it is monstrous to be careless about references, and to trust to a late authority.’

Politically vigorous

With these threefold sources of corruption—war, slavery, false belief — the Roman empire, so magnificent without, was a rotten fabric within. Politically vigorous, morally it was diseased. Never perhaps has the world witnessed cases of such stupendous moral corruption, as when immense power, boundless riches, and native energy were left as they were then without object, control, or shame. Then, from time to time, there broke forth a very orgy of wanton strength. But its hour was come. The best spirits were all filled with a sense of the hollowness and corruption around them. Statesmen, poets, and philosophers in all these last eras were pouring forth their complaints and fears, or feebly attempting remedies. The new element had long been making its way unseen, had long been preparing the ground, and throughout the civilised world there was rising up a groan of weariness and despair.

For three centuries a belief in the existence of one God alone, in whom were concentrated all power and goodness, who cared for the moral guidance of mankind, a belief in the immortality of the soul and its existence in another state, had been growing up in the minds of the best Greek thinkers. The noble morality of their philosophers had taken strong hold of the higher consciences of Rome, and had diffused amongst the better spirits throughout the empire new and purer types. Next the great empire itself, forcing all nations in one state, had long inspired in its worthiest members a sense of the great brotherhood of mankind, had slowly mitigated the worst evils of slavery, and paved the way for a religious society. Thirdly, another and a greater cause was at work guided tours turkey.

Overruling Creator

Through Greek teachers the world had long been growing familiar with the religious ideas of Asia, its conceptions of a superhuman world, of a world of spirit, angel, demon, future state, and overruling Creator, with its mystical imagery, its spiritual poetry, its intense zeal and fervent emotion. And now, partly from the contact with Greek thought and Roman civilisation, a great change was taking place in the very heart of that small Jewish race, of all the races of Asia known to us the most intense, imaginative, and pure: possessing a high sense of personal morality, the keenest yearnings of the heart, and the deepest capacity for spiritual fervour.

In their midst arose a fellowship of devoted brethren, gathered around one noble and touching character, which adoration has veiled in mystery till he passes from the pale of definite history. On them had dawned the vision of a new era of their national faith, which should expand the devotion of David, the spiritual zeal of Isaiah, and the moral power of Samuel into a gentler, wider, and more loving spirit.

How this new idea grew to the height of a new religion, and was shed over the whole earth by the strength of its intensity and its purity, is to us a familiar tale. We know how the first fellowship of the brethren met; how they went forth with words of mercy, love, justice, and hope; we know their self-denial, humility, and zeal; their heroic lives and awful deaths; their loving natures and their noble purposes; how they gathered around them wherever they came the purest and greatest; how across mountains, seas, and continents the communion of saints joined in affectionate trust; how from the deepest corruption of the heart arose a yearning for a truer life; how the new faith, ennobling the instincts of human nature, raised up the slave, the poor, and the humble to the dignity of common manhood, and gave new meaning to the true nature of womanhood; how, by slow degrees, the church, with its rule of right, of morality, and of communion, arose; how the first founders and apostles of this faith lived and died, and all their gifts were concentrated in one, of all the characters of certain history doubtless the loftiest and purest — the unselfish, the great-hearted Paul.

Common school work in old Stamboul

They organize and superintend and teach common schools and kindergartens. Whether in this common school work in old Stamboul, or in the College for Girls at Scutari the missionary women strongly draw their scholars to admire and to seek likeness to the great model and ideal of Christian character. A girl once taught in one of these schools is always the devoted friend of her teachers, and this fact, alone, ensures to her something at least of steady growth; for she will be borne in mind and will receive kindly words and helpful suggestion, by letter if she has removed to a distant place, up to the very end of her life.

Methods devised by the missionary women attract in the Sunday school. They inspire the native men and women who help as teachers so that none shall go away from the Bible lesson without some new seed-thought fixed in their minds to grow and bear fruit in other scenes. One illustration of the pervading quality of their influence was furnished by their work at Constantinople after the massacre of 1S96. Two thousand families were found to be destitute, having been bereaved, and also stripped of their household goods. Money to keep alive these sufferers quickly came from England and America private ephesus tours, and the missionary ladies were at once in the midst of them. They sought out the needy; they investigated and reported upon their real wants; and they did hard work in distributing clothing, food, and especially materials for work whereby broken families might support themselves.

The attempt to encourage a despairing people

The attempt to encourage a despairing people to believe it worth while again to work for a living, to inspire them with energy to persist in the face of cold, dogged hostility that thought to thwart their efforts to find work, and finally to send to the ends of the earth in order to find market for the wares which the discouraged people began to produce, formed a steady drain upon the sympathy and patience and ingenuity of all who engaged in the work. But through these and similar efforts a great deliverance from de-moralization and even death was made effective to a bewildered and ruined people.

In this summary of general missionary effort at Constantinople we may see how varied in form and how beneficent and persuasive in effect it may be if it is impelled, not by sectarian narrowness, but by the broad purpose of seeking to let the people see the loveliness of Jesus Christ and their own need of Him. It needs no seer’s vision to discover that work like this, supported by that of an uncontroversial but thoroughly Christian press, has quite as much of influence on the life of the masses as the Christian College. It may give direction to the thoughts and tastes and aims of individuals through the whole immense region which looks to Constantinople for guidance in questions of thought and of taste. Shape the thoughts and the aims of individuals and you have done much to fix the destiny of the masses of which they are a part.

European colony without really knowing

With rare exceptions the result of this state of affairs is that the Turk, if in official position, rubs shoulders with the best part of the European colony without really knowing one of them, or if he is in common life he merely looks at them afar off. In either case the European with whom the Turk comes into real contact is the profligate one—the one who to whom the Turk might perhaps teach morals, or else it is the half-blood Levantine who poses as a European on the strength of his right to wear a hat. The idea of the Western civilization received by the Turk from either of these is that it centres about wine, women, and the roulette table. If he had before no tendency to haunt the drinking houses and brothels of Pera, the Turk gets the impulse to do so from the “ Europeans ” whom he has met, and that very rapidly makes an end of him.

Civilization represented by Western commercial enterprise and isolated from religious principle has been in contact with the people of Constantinople for many many years. Since the Crimean War it has had untrammelled sway. Some of the externals of environment have benefited from this contact. Individuals may sometimes have been lifted out of the quagmires of the mass of the population by glimpses of what manhood really is. But there is no question as to the general result. The result has been the moral deterioration of the city, and the strengthening of the repulsion felt by Turks toward the West.

Constantinople dealt

One of the leading Turkish papers of Constantinople dealt with this subject not long ago. It said that the one positive influence of Western civilization is against faith in God and in favour of drunkenness and debauchery. It pointed to the great number of disorderly houses in Pera, which engulf and destroy large numbers of Mohammedan youth, and it declared in open terms that the family life of Europeans living in Pera is such as to lead to the supposition that marital fidelity is not known there. “ We want none of this Christian civilization,” said the Turk jeep safari bulgaria.

The syndicate of European officials who constitute the Administrators of the Turkish Public Debt, have multiplied several fold the places in Constantinople where liquor is sold. They are proud of this, for it has added to the revenues derived from the tax on liquors and has brought dividends to the holders of Turkish bonds. But it is worthy of note that during two hundred years of commercial intercourse between the Turkish people and civilized Europe, the mercantile colonists living in Constantinople in all the splendour of superior culture, enterprise and business success, have not once tried to do anything for the improvement of the minds or the morals of the native population, whether Mohammedan or Christian. It was the missionary spirit in Roman Catholic and Protestant churches which first gave the city schools that could teach and school books which children could understand.

Turkish ladies are richly dressed

It should not be supposed, however, that ladies of rich families who have plenty of servants make themselves quite such guys in the hours before custom requires them to dress for the afternoon. But the circumstance that they may wander about the premises unprepared for observation of others, is what makes the Turk fortify his house against outside eyes by truly ingenious contrivances. When they are dressed, Turkish ladies are richly dressed. In the street what one sees is a voluminous silken sheet thrown over the head and falling to the feet. This gives the woman the form of an inflated pillow tied in the middle with a string. But, in Constantinople at least, the lady after she has entered the house and has thrown off her outer shell is quite a different creature. True she sometimes still inclines to wear her hair cut straight across at the nape of the neck. She loves big figures and startling colour schemes in her dress. She has not yet found her taste oppressed by die jostling of scarlet and magenta which she uses in the same costume. But in the main her dress is cut after Western patterns when at last she dresses herself for the social functions of the afternoon.

But neither the tardy dressing, nor the social function which is like a Western Woman’s Club, nor the house that she lives in makes a home for the woman of Constantinople. A wealthy Turk’s best house is commonly a showy palace on the Bosphorus. Its front, after the fashion of Venetian palaces, is lapped by the water of the sea. Behind it delicious groves and brilliant gardens rise terrace on terrace in magnificent spaciousness. Both land and placid sea promise sweet content to all who enjoy the privileges of the place. To the men, so long as they pursue their separate pleasure in their part of the premises, the promise may be fulfilled. But rarely to the women. In one such house of which I know, there arc sixty women private tours istanbul. Place as wife or favourite or servant is assigned to each. Each has abundant food and clothing, with jewels and other adornments befitting her special station. The great rooms of the house are divided among the women according to their rank. Housekeeping arrangements and responsibilities rest upon servants alone. The ladies have time enough on their hands to make the finding of ways to get rid of it a tax upon their ingenuity.

Splendid mirrors

Books, papers, pictures there are not. Musical instruments there are, singers there are, and one can kill time with these for a while. One can dress oneself up in new costumes, and admire the effect in splendid mirrors, and then undress and don some new combination of costly robes. But this disposes of but an hour or two. One may lounge by the window and watch passing steamers and sailing vessels and fishing craft and caiques, and wonder how much Bessim Bey paid for his new boat, and note the handsome boatmen that Nazli Khanum has picked up somewhere. If a steamer passes very near the shore, the distress of the caiques thrashed about in its wake gives momentary excitement. But the wish for power to make the long days go faster—the longing for something to do, is the burden of life to every lady in that house. Quarreling with the other ladies is the sure recourse under such circumstances. When a quarrel begins it may last for days and develop into a feud that ranges the whole household—mistress or maid—in factions.

Another diversion which makes time fly is the advent of the master of the house. He is a noble looking gray-bearded man who has a past but not much future. He spends most of his time on the other side of the high stone wall which separates the house of the men from that of the women. Announcement of his arrival makes a wild flurry of excitement. There is a general rush to provide for his entertainment. There is visible expectancy of being permitted to receive him or at least of being called to hear a kind word from him. And then there is the hitter, inconsolable disappointment of the unlucky ones. But all these emotions serve after all to cause the time to pass.

Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople

In the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople is temporal and spiritual guidance for all the Armenians of the Empire. From these eternal hills of New Rome the Legate of the Pope issues edicts of control for all Roman Catholics of Western Asia. There is the Grand Rabbi of the Jews of the Spanish emigration; there is the Exarch of the Bulgarian Church, and there too is the civil chief to whom the Protestant subjects of the Sultan look for obtaining both the instructions and the favour of their sovereign. Turkey has not been able to free itself from the ancient notion that the common people must be controlled through chief men of their own, who by necessity of their ability must live near the Sovereign. Hence its system of Government emphasizes the unique importance of this city to all in the Empire who would be or do anything whatever. Lapse of years has not ended, nor can it ever end the sway of this marvellous city over millions of Asiatics to whom during many centuries it has been known as the dominant point of the universe.

The influence of Constantinople can never cease so long as the peoples of Western Asia persist in their ancient custom of coming periodically to this city, like the flow of a tidal wave, in order to carry back with its ebb to distant hamlets the impressions and other gains which the city has given them. Under these circumstances Constantinople may be called the throbbing heart of Turkey sightseeing sofia. When beneficent principles of life once more govern the lives of its population, this city will once more become as of old an efficient channel for the influence of Europe to control Western Asia; this time, let us hope, with effect to lead the imaginative continent into voluntary and permanent abnegation of the views which have made it hitherto the bitter enemy of its own development and of true civilization.

 Constantinople as the centre of a world

Perhaps the best way of putting the reader in touch with this peculiarity of Constantinople as the centre of a world of its own, and with the relation of this peculiarity to the efforts of the missionary stationed there, will be to mention a few by-ways of missionary experience in this city of broad issues. At least those at a distance may thus have better understanding of the people for whom the missionary is working and of their attitiule toward him. And if these experiences reveal the existence of humours in the life of the missionary, it will be but one more case where life alternates between situations at which men laugh and those at which they weep. One point which should be particularly borne in mind is the wide region of country from which the parties to these experiences came or to which their influence extended.

An application like that made to me one day by a man whom we will call Ahmed Bey, is typical of many made to missionaries at Constantinople by people who theoretically ought to be their enemies. Ahmed Bey was a handsome young Mohammedan from a city in Bulgaria, and an officer in the Turkish navy. He came to me in great distress. A certain Turkish Admiral of some importance so far as influence goes, had a daughter of comparative youth only, and afflicted like Leah with some trouble of the eyes which made her helpless much of the time, with injury to her prospects of matrimony.

This Admiral had unhappily seen the handsome young officer and wished to marry him to his daughter. When the officer declined the honour with thanks, the Admiral, Laban-like, said that marry her he must. Otherwise he would order the young man to the naval station at Bussora, on the Persian Gulf, for three years. To be sent to Bussora is like being sent to Cuba in yellow fever time. The young man came to me asking “ Must I marry this sore-eyed girl?” I could not help him. The order for his exile to Bussora was actually issued, and only overruled by the appeal at my suggestion of the weeping mother of mv friend to a Pasha of high rank who was a native of the same city in Bulgaria as Ahmed Bey, and who had access to the ear of the Sultan.

Great excitement and bawling

At last, with great excitement and bawling, to which the Pool late on the evening of Greenwich fair was nothing, we got out of the Golden Horn. A long caique with a sail, and twelve or fourteen passengers, overtook us, like the wind, and soon shot ahead. The people smoked and drank coffee, all working their beads about with restless irritability; and a band of music played airs from the operas of Donizetti and Verdi. The great feature of this band was the performer on the Pandean pipes ; it Ls impossible to conceive the excellent music he blew out from them. They contained four octaves, and were not flat, as the common ones, but curved round, so that his lips formed the arc of a circle, as it were, of which his neck was the centre. Only associating the Pandman pipes with a street drum, as accompanying the exertions of Punch, acrobats, and the fantoccini, I was amazed to find what they were really capable of, when well played.

The voyage lasted, altogether, nearly two hours, and each time passengers were landed the riot was awful. The captain, who was a little podgy man, in a fez and frock-coat, stormed and swore, and jumped about on the paddle-boxes like a maniac. The watermen in the caiques fought and hanged each other with a ferocity that exceeded the boatmen at the Piraeus, as they struggled to get their fragile barks next the steamer; and the passengers jostled, and pushed, and so increased the confusion, that it was wonderful how they were not all drowned. All this went on at every island, but the most frightful to-do was at Prinkipo ; and, although a tolerable swimmer, I was not sorry when our over-laden caique touched the shore. We had been nearly swamped by getting between two larger boats, in a manner that would have been dangerous on a river, but here a heavy sea was running city tours istanbul.

Principally Greeks

We landed under a chi, along which a row of coffee-houses and some private villas ran; and, at the extremity of the promenade, we found an inn, in a fine position, with a view of Constantinople in the distance, looking far more beautiful than Venice — which, in all truth, is ‘not so attractive on first sight as some writers would make it — with the domes and minarets of Stamboul shining like gold, in the sunset. The hotel was kept by a Neapolitan; and was built entirely of light thin wood — very like those we see in Switzerland, in high and out-of-the-way spots. The landlord appeared very anxious to make his customers comfortable. ‘He gave us a very good dinner at a table-dhoti, where we sat down some fourteen or sixteen — principally Greeks; but he somewhat committed himself in recommending a bottle of Broussa beer to our notice. Broussa is a city in Asia hlinor, celebrated for its manufactories of silk, which supply the Levant. It certainly cannot claim any distinction for its breweries, for I never tasted anything so nasty in my life. With my eyes shut, I could have imagined it a species of effervescing black-draught.

As soon as dinner was over, we turned out for a stroll about the village, which possesses several very novel and entertaining features. I have said that there was a row of coffee-houses on the heights facing the sea. These were all wooden buildings with porticos before them; and on the opposite side of the promenade, in front, were platforms, surrounded by railings, built to project over the edge of the cliff, and singularly insecure. The masters supply coffee, narghiles, and a very tolerable punch.

The steamboat band was playing in front of the principal house ; and before all of them were suspended hoops, with thin white cylinders depending from them, which I at first took to be candles. But I found afterwards that they were blue-lights; and that when the beauties of Prinkipo assembled, (which they were to do on tho morrow in great numbers,) and it got dark, some public-spirited and gallant gentleman would pay to have one of these fireworks ignited, and thus show off the fair gazers to the admiration of the spectators. At present there were not many ladies about. Our steamer was evidently the “husband’s boat;” and they were listening to tho gossip of Constantinople in their own houses.

Portici fishermen

“All English gentlemen,” continued Demetri, “think they cut off heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on plates at the Seraglio Gate. And they think people are always being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which conies from the wall of the Seraglio Point, as the placo they slide them down. It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of other things.”

Demetri was right. To be completely disillusioned on certain points, one has but to journey with a determination to be only affected by things as they strike you. Swiss girls, St. Bernard dogs, Portici fishermen, the Rhine, Nile travelling, and other objects of popular rhapsodies, fearfully deteriorate upon practical acquaintance. Pew tourists have the courage to say that they have been “bored,” or at least disappointed, by some conventional lion. They find that Guide-books, Diaries, Notes, Journals, Ac. Ac., all copy one from the other in their enthusiasm about the same things; and they shrink from the charge of vulgarity, or lack of mind, did they dare to differ. Artists and writers trill study effect rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions of ninety- nine people out of a hundred — allowing all these to possess average education, perception, and intellect — when painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual, is to the faithful photograph.

“ That fellow’s a Dervish — clam’ rascal!” Demetri went on, pointing to the individual; “ we shall see him dance ou Friday; ho keeps a shop in the bazaar. That’s a man from Bokhara — dam’ fellow, too; all bad there. This is a Ilan.”

The Ilan, or, as we usually pronounce it, Khan, was a square surrounded by buildings, with galleries; with other occupants it could have been easily converted into a slave-market. A vague notion of it may be formed from an old borough inn — one story high, and built of stone. There was, however, a tree or two in the middle, and a fountain; in the corner was also an indifferent coffee-house.

Two hundred in Constantinople

These places, of which there are nearly two hundred in Constantinople, have been built, from time to time, by the sultans, and wealthy persons, for the accommodation of the merchants arriving, by caravan, from distant countries. No charge is made for their use; but the rooms are entirely unfurnished, so that the occupier must bring his mattress, little carpet, and such humble articles of cookery as he may require, with him. A key of his room is given to him, and he is at once master, for the time being, of the apartment. In the Ilan I visited, the occupants were chiefly Persians, in high black sheepskin caps, squatted, in the full enjoyment of Eastern indolence, upon their carpets, and smoking their narghillas, or “ hubble-bubbles.” Some of them came from a very road distance — Pamarcand, and the borders of Cabool, for instance; so that their love of repose, after the toil and incertitude of a caravan journey, was quite allowable.

Demetri next insisted that l should see the two vast subterraneous catkin, relics of great antiquity. One of these, the roof of which was supported by three or four hundred pillars, is dry, and used as a rope-walk, or silk-winding gallery. The other has water in it. You go through the court of a house, and then descend, over rubbish and broken steps, to a cellar, from which the reservoir extends, until lost in its gloomy immensity. The few bits of candle which the man lights to show it off, cannot send their rays very far from the spectator. It is more satisfactory to throw a stone, and hear it plash in the dark water at the end of its course, with a strange, hollow sound. Over this mighty tank are the houses and streets of Stamboul. The number of columns, which are of marble, is said to be about three hundred ; and the water, which you are expected to taste, is tolerably good private tour ephesus.

I`ve left the cistern, and traversed a few more lanes on our way to the bazaars. In these Eastern thoroughfares, narrow and crowded, one continually labors under the impression of being about to turn into a broad street or large square from a bye-way; but this never arrives. A man may walk for hours about Constantinople, and always appear to be in the back streets; although, in reality, they may be the great arteries of the city. Tortuous, and very much alike, Stamboul is also one large labyrinth, as regards its thoroughfares; the position of a stranger left by himself in the centre would be hopeless.

Therapia and Buvukdere

At two or three points of the shore of the Bosphorus were some graveyards, better kept than those about Constantinople. The tombstones were painted most gaudily, and the inscriptions were written in gold and silver. I was told that the crews of ships passing along were in the habit of breaking off these monuments and taking them away as future ornaments to gardens—an offence calling for more severe reprehension than the generality of travelling sacrileges.

We passed Therapia and Buvukdere, about which pleasant places I shall have more to say by and by; and at last landed at a little village on the Asiatic side of the stream. This was as prettily oriental a spot as I saw during my sojourn at Constantinople ; but I fear I cannot do it justice by description. The village was situated at the base of a wooded mountain, rising from a small bay round the corner of one of the promontories, with which the shores of the Bosphorus abound. The waves coming in from the Euxine rippled against its very street—for it had but one, and this was not above ten feet wide; with a long row of rustic coffee-houses facing the water, in all of which some dirtily picturesque fellows were lolling about and smoking private tour Istanbul.

The thoroughfare was not altogether clear; for the spars of the ships—many of which were anchored in a line along the shore—at times crossed it. They were all wicked looking felucca-rigged craft: and the wild swarthy men who slept about them only knew in what their real trade consisted; for between Trcbizonde or Odessa, and the Archipelago, all sorts of wickedness’s may be achieved. This street ended in a small open place, surrounded by ragged wooden houses, one of which had been built round a gigantic plane-tree— so enormous that its bows stretched over the whole of the little square; and caused the ground to be pleasantly chequered with dancing lights and shadows.

Fountain of purely Eastern build

At one end was a fountain of purely Eastern build, at which some of the faithful were performing their holy ablutions, and at its side a tired camel was nodding and blinking lazily in the heat. Two little shojs adjoined this fountain : one was a coffee-house and the other belonged to a cook. A seller of melons had spread his store upon the ground, near there, and some of his fruit, not bigger than oranges, were delicious. Rude wooden benches were placed about in front of the coffee-house and round its walls, and our old friends, the dogs, were sleeping about, or squabbling for carrion, everywhere. At last, we were away from every trace of Europe.

We settled to dine here, so we brought up our basket from the cacique, and got some cups and plates from the coffee-house, which had a mud floor and walls, and in it some natives were playing at ricrac, casting the dice from their hands instead of a box, whilst others were going through their prayers, in corners. We were evidently objects of great curiosity for all of them; and the pale ale they could not understand at all. Indeed, they grouped round us when the cork was drawn, like a street audience round a conjuror; and the very dogs appeared to partake of the bewilderment.

We were very hungry, and such a good odor came from the cook’s shop, that we determined to patronize him. He was making kebobs—and if there was a spot on -which it was proper to taste that oriental delicacy, this was certainly the one. His shop was an open one, with a brazier in the window place, upon which the meats were being cooked. At the door-post hung a piece of mutton, of excellent quality; this was exhibited to show that he only made use of good meat. He cut it into small bits, seasoned these, and put them on a skewer: they were then cooked over the fire, and when properly done, served up with pepper, salt, and onion chopped very fine. No knife or fork was required, but the morsels were eaten from the skewer, and very excellent indeed they were. Then we finished our hard boiled eggs, had a delicious melon for dessert, which cost four- pence, and so made as fine a dinner as I ever partook of. Certainly I never sat down to one so full of agreeable associations, or served in so picturesque a fashion.

I have said that this little village was situated at a bend of the Bosphorus. We therefore agreed to walk over a mountain which rose directly behind it, and send the boat round to meet us at another yioint, as there were some curiosities to see on the summit, as well as a fine view. We first passed the ruins of a building known as The Genoese Castle, which must in former times have been of enormous extent and magnitude. Getting higher up, we had a fine prospect of the opposite, or European, shores of the Bosphorus; and, at last, on a ridge of ground, we got our first view of the Black Sea, with its long heavy swell coming towards the entrance of the strait in mighty curves, and dashing over the Symplegadcs which still thrust their rugged heads from the foam, as they arc said to have done when Jason passed with the Argonauts.